WE just finished recording Episode 10 of hackenslash: the podcast a few hours ago, with ABS-CBN Multimedia head Mitch Padua as our “Hot Seat” guest.

Apart from talking to me and my co-host Alex Villafania about gaming, Mitch had interesting things to share about the upcoming portal from ABS-CBN known as Amped.ph. While gaming will be one of the offerings, the overall direction is to make it a full-blown digital entertainment site, with music downloads, mobile content and other services. By the way, Aimee Marcos will be the one in charge of the music initiatives, according to Mitch.

I won’t spoil the surprise — listen to Episode 10 once it’s online  — but it’s interesting how ABS-CBN plans to leverage its traditional media content in order to complement the multimedia services it will offer on Amped.ph, including an iTunes-like service. Stay tuned.

SINGAPORE-BASED ITJournoAsia.com has cited the latest entry from my CNET Asia tech blog.

Since the ITJournoAsia.com site is a password-protected site for registered tech journos, IT companies and PR firms across the region, I’m republishing their article here:

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UPDATE: Here’s Alex’s Breaking News story for ShowbizandStyle.INQUIRER.net.

ALEX VILLAFANIA and I covered the photo shoot of Alicia Mayer just a while ago, where she wore a lettuce bikini to help promote vegetarianism in the Philippines.

Alicia is helping People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) raise public awareness, and the media was invited to take photos and videos in a sneak preview of the ad campaign that will be shot by Raymund Isaac.

This is one event where I was really struck by the impact of technology on the way we cover the news. I actually overheard one person who sounded dumbfounded that we were using a mobile phone to take photos and video.

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(Originally published as a column piece on Jan. 16, 2007)

CONVERGENCE. Synergy. Just a couple of the buzzwords we’ve been hearing about for the past few years. Makes you wonder if the reason we still keep talking about convergence and synergy is that maybe after all these years, they have yet to become a reality. Some of the promises of technology, after all, remain promises.

Anyway, I thought I’d share with you a link e-mailed by INQUIRER.NET Infotech reporter Erwin Oliva, who is known in the blogosphere as Cyberbaguioboy.

It’s a link to an interesting Washington Post article, Newspaper-TV Marriage Shows Signs of Strain.

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(Originally published as a column piece on Dec. 27, 2006)

ANOTHER year is almost over, and unbelievably 2007 is just around the corner. A year that I hope will be a better one for all of us.

A lot of things happened this year, some good, some bad. One of the biggest things for me would have to be the new INQ7.net, which you can see from the changes in the homepage, part of which now features stories from GMANews.tv.

You’ve heard, of course, of the new partnership between the Philippine Daily Inquirer and GMA Network, which will relaunch INQ7.net as the doorway to our respective sites, INQUIRER.net and GMANews.tv.

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